This invention relates to crop material handling apparatus and is directed particularly to the delivery of feed material to a blower or vertical impeller means.
Crop material is stored in a chopped condition in silos, bunkers or the like. The chopped crop material is delivered to the top of the silo by a forage blower at ground level. The blower is usually driven by a power take-off from a tractor and the crop or feed material is delivered to the blower by auger means of conveyor means. The blower receives the chopped crop and discharges it through a vertically extending transitioned member which delivers the chopped crop to a long vertical conduit or pipe with a curved spout on the top for dropping the chopped crop into the silo.
The shortcoming of the present forage blowers is the large amount of power required for the amount of crop material lifted to the top of the silo. The uneven and noisy operation of the blower is due to the delivery of large clumps of crop material to the blower which the blower must break up in order to discharge it upwardly through the transition member and to the closeness of the shear bar to the pitch circle of the blades of the blower. Another disadvantage is that with the conventional auger type feed, the forage wagon can be unloaded into the auger at a single position of the wagon in relation to the forage blower. This restriction often makes it impossible to properly place the forage blower and the forage wagon for best transferance of the chopped crop and convenience of operation. Some forage blowers have long auger and conveyor means. These add to the size and cost of the blower without providing the desired versatility of positioning of the forage wagon.
It is, therefore, the purpose of this invention to provide a forage blower that substantially increases the amount of crop of feed material handled for a given power input, operates more smoothly and quietly than present forage blowers and may receive feed material from a forage wagon over a range of relative positions.